The quest
for understanding is a search for order: the order that underlies the physical
world about us and the order that underlies the artistic, intellectual, and
technological creations of the human imagination. When this order is discovered,
descriptions of it are made and passed down from generation to generation to
preserve the discovery.

The descriptions
of order are neatly packaged into "explanations." Explanations are
themselves orderly. They are logically organized so that one point leads smoothly
to the next. People follow the logic, and they too come to understand. It
is not surprising, then, that explanations are the basic materials of formal
education.

Surrounded
by all this neatness and order, however, one can jump to an erroneous conclusion.
One can assume that the inventors of the creations we study followed the same
kind of linear logic in producing them that we use in describing them. In reality
the process is altogether different. The flow of ideas does not follow a linear
logic. If we are unaware of the difference, the sequence of ideas we encounter
during our own creative work can be at such odds with our expectations that
we reject the very process that is helping us—and we squelch our own creativity.

"Self
shutdown" can be avoided if we learn the unique patterns of thinking that
make up the creative process. For once we recognize those patterns in ourselves,
we become trusting of our ideas and gather the courage to let them lead us to
their fruitful conclusion.

Conscious and Unconscious Processes

Creation
occurs when our ideas achieve expression as a novel design in the physical world.
A portion of this process is consciously governed. We can activate it by: (1)
steadily focusing attention on the problem; (2) calmly observing the ideas that
flow into consciousness; (3) willingly accepting all those ideas, no
matter how inconsequential, fragmented, ambiguous, disruptive, or heretical
they seem at the moment; and (4) patiently recording them.

The remainder
of the process, however, is spontaneous. We have no control over what specific
ideas will emerge, how they will fit together, or what further ideas will arise
to improve the fit. For that reason creative work proceeds best when we acknowledge
that we are possessed of two completely different minds: one, a conscious
mind, that fills the role of a dedicated and attentive student; and the
other, an unconscious mind, that functions like a distinguished foreign
visitor who has come to tell us about his exotic country.

While we
cannot anticipate what specific ideas will come to us, we can know something
about the patterns that the ideas will follow as they unfold. The following
discussion establishes the basis for those patterns, goes on to describe them
in some detail, and then considers the setting in which they flourish.

The
Formal Basis of Emerging Ideas

Conceptual Structures

Definition.We carry around in our
heads a "cataloging system" of conceptual structures. These are sets
of relationships that model the data of our experiences and the relationships
arising from that data. Conceptual structures are the foundation of our understanding.
They enable us to tell dogs from cats, to predict that a person who has twice
stolen our wallet probably is not to be trusted, and generally to go about the
business of making sense of the world.

Conservation of energy.Conceptual
structures develop as the information we experience is organized in accordance
with the principle of energy conservation: The psyche tries to minimize theenergy it uses to process, store, and recall information. To accomplish
this it packages information in an orderly configuration for ease of handling—like
packing clothes neatly and snugly in the smallest possible suitcase. The elements
of experience are organized into the least costly configurations, taking into
account the elements' inherent properties and their relation to the configurations
currently operating in one's psyche.

Best-Fit

Ideally
speaking, there are two kinds of configurations. One of these is what we might
call "intrinsic best-fit"; the other we can refer to as "immediate
best-fit." Here is a simple example of these, followed by an abstract
description.

Suppose
some Saturday afternoon you are getting things straightened up around your place,
and you have twenty boxes to store in an empty closet. The arrangement of boxes
that you choose to make the best use of closet space (intrinsic best-fit)
is likely to differ from the arrangement you would end up with if you put the
same twenty boxes in the closet one at a time over a period of five years.
In the latter case, by settling for a less than perfect arrangement and putting
each new box in the place that required the least change in the existing order
(immediate best-fit), you could avoid the hassle of starting over from
scratch and removing all the boxes from the closet each time a new box showed
up—something the perfect space-saving arrangement would require.

Intrinsic best-fit.Intrinsic best-fit
is, then, that configuration of elements which has the fewest structural shortcomings.
It is context free and is not influenced by previously established organizational
precedents. Intrinsic best-fit minimizes: (1) gaps—empty "spaces"
that have no role within the form; (2) redundancies—two or more elements
duplicating one another's role within the form; and (3) contradictions—two
or more elements negating one another's role within the form.

Immediate best-fit.Immediate best-fit
takes context into account. The formal outcome is mediated by previously established
organizational precedents and saves energy by fitting new elements into the
existing structure instead of dismantling it to arrange both old and new elements
into a perfect form.

Sooner
or later, however, there is likely to appear some new element which the present
configuration cannot handle—a box that won't fit into the closet as it is currently
arranged. In that case either the element must be rejected, or the existing
configuration must be taken apart and restructured into some approximation of
intrinsic best-fit to include it.

Form and Aesthetic Perception

The world as structure.We interact
with all sorts of phenomena—tangible and intangible. Each phenomenon is the
manifestation of a set of structural relations, which constitute its particular
form. Some phenomena are physical, lie outside us, and are experienced through
one or more of the “five senses.” Others are mental, lie within us, and are
only indirectly related to the senses.

The aesthetic sense.Because we are
predisposed to model data, organizing it into a best-fit configuration, we have
a sensitivity to the structural relations of phenomena, a kind of “aesthetic
sense.” When we experience any phenomenon, whether it originates within us
or outside us, we automatically compare its perceived structure to our idealized
criteria for best-fit—like a woodworker testing the accuracy of his shape against
a template. The result is an awareness of the shortcomings within the phenomenon's
structure that violate our intuitions about best-fit.

THE
PATTERN OF EMERGING IDEAS

Ideas as a Response to Structure

The unconscious
mind, in response to the structural shortcomings that we perceive, spontaneously
generates into consciousness ideas for improving the fit. Unless the situation
we are trying to improve is a simple one, the idea that corrects the bad fit
we have perceived will also introduce a different bad fit somewhere else in
the system. That shortcoming then becomes the focus of attention, and more
ideas are generated to make an improvement there. In turn, that improvement
creates yet another weakness and so on.

Our ideas
for improvement are of two types. Some of these are ideas for changing the
form to better accommodate the contents. In such instances we keep the
elements, but we reorder them to create new associations and to alter or eliminate
old associations. Others are ideas for changing the contents to better
accommodate the form. Here we keep the configuration, but we improve its balance
by adding, subtracting, or substituting elements.

Balancing Form and Content

The solution
seesaws back and forth between improvements in form (which lead to shortcomings
in content) and improvements in content (which lead to shortcomings in form)
until at last harmony is achieved between the two and the structure attains
balance. If the problem is a complex one the process begins within one of its
subsystems, and as a balance of form and content is attained there that subsystem
becomes part of the contents of a larger system.

Roundaboutness

The solution
process does not follow a linear sequence of steps (A, B, C, D, E, . . .).
Rather the path is circuitous, returning to previous steps to make additional
adjustments to compensate for the imbalance the intervening corrections introduced
(for example, A, B, C, A, D, C, E).

A parallel
example to this, although much more regular, is the process of changing a flat
tire. You put on the new tire and begin to reattach the lug nuts. You tighten
the first lug nut securely, screw the remaining nuts into place, and return
to the first one only to find it loose again. You tighten it more and then
find that the second one requires further tightening, and so on around the wheel.
The adjustment of each lug nut affects the entire structure. Idea systems evolve
in a similar way.

Limited Visibility

Because
each idea for improving the structure is also the source of the next bad fit
that will emerge into awareness, we can normally see ahead just to the next
step of the process. Subsequent weaknesses of fit (and the ensuing ideas for
repair elicited by those weaknesses) will only become apparent after
the current corrective action is taken. Each move brings the next move into
view.

Unconscious Wisdom

There is
evidence that the unconscious mind, in offering up solutions to the shortcomings
at hand, may introduce elements of bad fit calculated to direct us to the unexpected
solution of a problem completely different from the one we thought we were working
on. This has happened so much in my own work that I no longer even consider
it unusual, and others working creatively in a variety of disciplines have reported
the same thing. Such surprises are most likely to occur when we are able to
suspend our presuppositions about the nature of the problem before us.

The
Setting in Which One Is Most Creative

To begin
this part of our discussion, let us take an example drawn from field sports.
A field game is constrained by the characteristics of the field on which it
is played. Nine innings of baseball played on a sidewalk will not achieve the
richness that can be found when the game is played on a regulation diamond.
To realize its full potential, baseball must be played on a field compatible
with its fundamental operations. So too with the generation of ideas. Imaginative
thinking must take place in a spatial, temporal, and emotional setting compatible
with its underlying psychical processes.

Creativity and Space

Conceptual space.The more novel
our ideas are, the more our conscious conceptual structures must yield to modification
(or even complete destruction and reconstitution) to admit the emerging material.
Ideas spring from the unconscious, but to surface into the outer world they
must pass through the gate of human consciousness. The ticket for passage is
congruence. There must be congruence between the ideas and the conceptual
structures which are to house and express them. Without this correspondence
ideas cannot make it through the gate and remain trapped outside consciousness.
To create is to understand in a new way—to alter the habitual conceptual structures
through which we interact with the world and clear the way for the emergence
of new kinds of thinking. In one of history's greatest conceptual “retoolings,”
Isaac Newton invented the calculus, which enabled him to articulate his theory
of universal gravity.

Physical space.As we have seen,
the organized whole into which our ideas will ultimately fit is seldom apparent
in the early stages of work. It only makes itself known gradually as the ideas
are experimentally ordered, reordered, and modified. The flow of ideas is enhanced
by recording them in a flexible layout. An ideal format allows us to move them
around and see them in new relationships, and lets us change one idea in a configuration
without having to recopy or reconstruct the entire configuration.

A composer
once told me that the size of the manuscript paper on which he worked affected
how easily his musical ideas evolved to their natural conclusion. He found
it helpful to compose on very large paper, placing his germ idea in the middle
of the page and radiating out from it in different directions to record the
possible evolutionary paths it might take. Thus when the evolutionary process
was completed, he could see all the possible avenues of transformation at once
and choose the one most appropriate to his purpose.

Creativity and Time

Creativity
is closely tied to one's concept of personal time. I like to think of personal
time as falling into three categories: maintenancetime, free
time, and creativetime.

Maintenance
time is that part of our day spent to keep ourselves, our environment, and our
social relations in good order—time devoted to things like making a living,
paying the bills, going to the grocery, taking out the garbage, and helping
a neighbor shovel his car out of a snow bank. Free time is a completely unstructured
period when the mind can wander where it will, unfettered by “shoulds,” “oughts,”
and imposed values—a time when all obligations are suspended and the psyche
is free to gravitate in its own natural direction. Creative time is that portion
of our hours when we take up the problem we have set for ourselves and turn
our attention inward to the spontaneous flow of ideas offered for our conscious
consideration. Creative time stands at the end of a path that passes through
maintenance time and free time, a path that eliminates from the psyche the distractions
of the outer world that diffuse our focus of attention and inhibit the rise
of unexplored materials into consciousness.

We need
a balance among the three kinds of time. One cannot retain the fire of creativity
without refueling it by keeping one's life in order. The most imaginative people
I know exhibit the same thoroughness in the mundane tasks of their day-to-day
existence as they do in their creative work. By the same token, one cannot
expect to be creative without taking the time to do “nothing.” One of the lamentable
facts about our culture is that it holds free time in such low esteem and subtly
chides those who engage in it. Probably this value more than any other passed
down to us blocks the avenue to creativity.

Creativity and Emotion

At the
heart of creativity are passion and optimism. The flow of ideas is activated
by a strong feeling that a solution is possible, that finding the solution is
important, and that making the effort to find it—however tedious that effort
might be—is itself of value, even if the solution should not be found.

Paradoxically,
the flow of ideas is maintained by a dispassionate acceptance of (and noninterference
with) whatever thoughts arise. One is simply to observe and record them while
remaining emotionally neutral toward them.

Perhaps it was the contradictory requirement of passion for
the problem and detachment from the solution process that the author of that
ancient and wise Chinese classic, the Tao te ching, had in mind:

Oftentimes,
one regards life with passionto see its manifest forms;Oftentimes, one strips oneself
of passionto see the Secret of Life.

The
Problems Most Worth Solving

The number
of problems surrounding us is infinite; our time here is finite. What problems
shall we choose? I believe the problems most worth solving are those that address
personal and societal needs simultaneously, problems that offer the challenge
of meaningful work to the thinker and hold the promise of a fuller life for
others.

It does
not matter whether our efforts serve only one additional person or the entire
human population. When we are motivated by strong feelings of community and
are striving for benefits that extend beyond ourselves, we call forth the imagination's
finest work and awaken deep within us a sense of who we are.